Ooosh! I'm cutting it close with this one, leaving it 'til the last day of the month to post my wish list...but as they say, better (very nearly) late, than never!
Here are some of the books that have caught my eye over the past four weeks, and that I hope to be able to read soon (dissertation-permitting!)
March Wish List:
1. Americanah - Chimamanda Adichie (Fourth Estate): following her wonderful chat with Zadie Smith. If you haven't seen it, you can check it out here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lSPMsV-23U#t=3318
2. A Hundred Pieces of Me - Lucy Dillon (Hodder)
3. Her - Harriet Lane (W&N). I'm a huge fan of book recommendations so my monthly wish list usually includes The Bookseller's 'Book of the Month'. Her is a psychological thriller I'm told not to miss it...so I won't!
Also: I'm so intrigued by James Patterson's children's series - of which the fourth instalment has recently hit the UK Bestseller Chart. I'm going to try and get my hands on Middle School: My Brother is a Big, Fat Liar to see just how an author with whom I associate gritty, hard-hitting thrillers adapts his style for children!
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Monday, 31 March 2014
Friday, 17 January 2014
January Wish List
University life is one long reading list at the moment and so, unfortunately, I don't anticipate having much time to cosy up to a book over the next five months that isn't about global disasters/contemporary France or written by Zadie Smith.
I'm not complaining - studying Literature at Warwick is the best decision I've made yet. However, I really am eager to graduate to get back to reading some crime/thriller/chick-lit wonders (especially if I could do it for a career)! So, I've decided as a little New Years Resolution that each month I'll compile a short list of a few books which have been published and which I plan on reading - one day!
January
1. The Amber Fury - Nathalie Haynes (Corvus)
2. Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn (Crown)
3. The Husband's Secret - Liane Moriarty (Penguin Books)
4. The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion (Penguin Books)
5. Barracuda - Christos Tsiolkas (Atlantic Books) - a must considering I proof read the jacket during my internship!
And I just have to get on to And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini which has been waiting patiently on my kindle for far too long!!
I think that's a good start to my 2014 reading list - I can't wait 'til I find the time to dabble in it.
I'm not complaining - studying Literature at Warwick is the best decision I've made yet. However, I really am eager to graduate to get back to reading some crime/thriller/chick-lit wonders (especially if I could do it for a career)! So, I've decided as a little New Years Resolution that each month I'll compile a short list of a few books which have been published and which I plan on reading - one day!
January
1. The Amber Fury - Nathalie Haynes (Corvus)
2. Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn (Crown)
3. The Husband's Secret - Liane Moriarty (Penguin Books)
4. The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion (Penguin Books)
5. Barracuda - Christos Tsiolkas (Atlantic Books) - a must considering I proof read the jacket during my internship!
And I just have to get on to And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini which has been waiting patiently on my kindle for far too long!!
I think that's a good start to my 2014 reading list - I can't wait 'til I find the time to dabble in it.
Sunday, 17 November 2013
Losing Our Attention
The technological boom of the 90s has seen so many incredible, once inconceivable, inventions become available to us - ones that we would find it so difficult to live without in the post-modern age. The Internet, of course, is the primary catalyst for the complete upheaval of the way in which we communicate, connect, and, indeed, learn.
But with all the wonders that it brings: instant chat, instant knowledge, instant...everything, there is an underlying fear that lurks in the social implications of the Internet boom.
Social networking has taken a battering of late, as sociologists consider and critique the ways in which we now communicate and convey ourselves via social networking sites such as Facebook - check out this video for an interesting interpretation of the way in which we are supposedly now all so "connected". http://elitedaily.com/news/world/this-video-will-have-you-completely-rethink-how-you-conduct-yourself-online-and-in-person-video/
But what worries me, is not so much the frailty and falsity of our "relationships", or "friends", but rather what the Internet is doing to our perception of learning, to our desire for knowledge.
The Internet is a student's dream - Google anything these days and, somewhere, you'll find an answer. Certainly, it is far easier to search in wordreference.com for a French definition, than to trawl through a dictionary. But is this instant availability of knowledge detrimental to our development as people? I mean, as thinking people?
I see two flaws with the Internet as a source of knowledge:
1. In the quality - how do you know that the first link that you click on is truth, and fact? If anyone can contribute to Wikipedia, how are we sure of any of the claims it makes? The abundance of information now available on the World Wide Web, though it may be tantalizing interesting, precise, and clear, is not monitored by anyone. Sure, you'd think you can trust sites such as The Guardian, and The Telegraph, but where is the quality control?
2. In the ease and speed - this might seem bizarre, for surely one of the main positives of the Internet is the speed at which we can access things. Yet, the speed, the not-needing-to-learn-the-skills of patience, to dissect and to search for the answer, this is something which is concerning as it means that we no longer ask questions. We are prepared to take the first answer that comes, and if we stop asking questions, we stop learning how to learn. We simply appropriate knowledge, we consume it, we do not discover it.
The internet, although on the one hand enabling innovation and communication, will, on the other hand, lead to a serious reduction in the attention span of young people, as they grow up in a world where answers are handed to them on a plate. Diminishing our attention span as a society, it will incite laziness. Our patience as readers, learners, and also with each other will suffer (who hasn't unknowingly been distracted from a face-to-face conversation to check their email on their phone?)
This applies to sciences, economics, politics - whatever field of study or interest. If we lose the ability or the desire to learn, because we are handed the answers by those who have already figured them out, what do we become?
The effect this will have on the younger generations of readers is what concerns me the most. How will a three hundred page novel, now, hold the attention of a fourteen year old? How does an author retain our interest when we are so prone to clicking on the next thing after two minutes of concentrating?
This is a problem that contemporary authors of today will have to tackle. Zadie Smith is already doing it, others will follow suit.
How do you engage a reader, without taking up too much of their time?
But with all the wonders that it brings: instant chat, instant knowledge, instant...everything, there is an underlying fear that lurks in the social implications of the Internet boom.
Social networking has taken a battering of late, as sociologists consider and critique the ways in which we now communicate and convey ourselves via social networking sites such as Facebook - check out this video for an interesting interpretation of the way in which we are supposedly now all so "connected". http://elitedaily.com/news/world/this-video-will-have-you-completely-rethink-how-you-conduct-yourself-online-and-in-person-video/
But what worries me, is not so much the frailty and falsity of our "relationships", or "friends", but rather what the Internet is doing to our perception of learning, to our desire for knowledge.
The Internet is a student's dream - Google anything these days and, somewhere, you'll find an answer. Certainly, it is far easier to search in wordreference.com for a French definition, than to trawl through a dictionary. But is this instant availability of knowledge detrimental to our development as people? I mean, as thinking people?
I see two flaws with the Internet as a source of knowledge:
1. In the quality - how do you know that the first link that you click on is truth, and fact? If anyone can contribute to Wikipedia, how are we sure of any of the claims it makes? The abundance of information now available on the World Wide Web, though it may be tantalizing interesting, precise, and clear, is not monitored by anyone. Sure, you'd think you can trust sites such as The Guardian, and The Telegraph, but where is the quality control?
2. In the ease and speed - this might seem bizarre, for surely one of the main positives of the Internet is the speed at which we can access things. Yet, the speed, the not-needing-to-learn-the-skills of patience, to dissect and to search for the answer, this is something which is concerning as it means that we no longer ask questions. We are prepared to take the first answer that comes, and if we stop asking questions, we stop learning how to learn. We simply appropriate knowledge, we consume it, we do not discover it.
The internet, although on the one hand enabling innovation and communication, will, on the other hand, lead to a serious reduction in the attention span of young people, as they grow up in a world where answers are handed to them on a plate. Diminishing our attention span as a society, it will incite laziness. Our patience as readers, learners, and also with each other will suffer (who hasn't unknowingly been distracted from a face-to-face conversation to check their email on their phone?)
This applies to sciences, economics, politics - whatever field of study or interest. If we lose the ability or the desire to learn, because we are handed the answers by those who have already figured them out, what do we become?
The effect this will have on the younger generations of readers is what concerns me the most. How will a three hundred page novel, now, hold the attention of a fourteen year old? How does an author retain our interest when we are so prone to clicking on the next thing after two minutes of concentrating?
This is a problem that contemporary authors of today will have to tackle. Zadie Smith is already doing it, others will follow suit.
How do you engage a reader, without taking up too much of their time?
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